When the script by writers Ken Kaufman and Howard Klausner first
started making the rounds in Hollywood, Senator John Glenn hadn’t made
his historic return to space. “Space Cowboys” met with interest but for
a while, inevitable rejection. Warner Bros. bought the script all the
same.
Then Senator John Glenn was approached about a return to space,
accepted, and was strapped into the space shuttle. A history maker
remade history once again, becoming the oldest man (at age 77) to go to
space.
“Space Cowboys” suddenly had an even greater following and push to get
to the big screen. Clint Eastwood was selected to direct the film and
star as Frank Corvin, an engineering designer whose knowledge becomes a
pivotal piece in the plot that unfolds.
Eastwood has been in front of the camera for over five decades, but
he’s truly come into his own while behind it. Over the past few films ...

“Sleepy Hollow” is another in the remarkable series of movies that
unite director Tim Burton and actor Johnny Depp. They work remarkably
well together, apparently sharing a somewhat macabre sense of humor and
love of scary movies. This is Burton’s attempt to out-Hammer a Hammer
movie—Hammer stalwart Christopher Lee is in the cast—and one of the
best-looking films he’s done.
Cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki and production designer Rick Heinrichs
(who worked with Burton when they were both film students) give the
film a burnished sheen, with everything except blood in muted, autumnal
tones. Forests are threaded with fog, every acre of ground outside the
small town of Sleepy Hollow is ankle-deep in fallen leaves, and the
trees are mostly bare. The visual and dramatic tones of the film are
perfectly matched, with the design just at the verge of excessive,
while the film itself introduces comedy at unexpected moments. The
movie is hardly a comedy, ...

On face-value, “Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow” should have
worked. It reached back into the same 1930s to 1940s Saturday morning
serial storytelling that proved so successful for the “Star Wars” and
“Indiana Jones” franchises that George Lucas and Steven Spielberg
re-invented as Hollywood blockbusters. Those movies used to be broken
down into ten- or fifteen-minute segments that were aired every week
before the main movie. That way moviegoers had more reason to come back
week after week to see the new releases.
The serials were known for their quick pacing, heroic characters, and
escapism that stopped – most of the time – just short of total
disbelief. That was the style Kerry Conran, the director and writer,
was reaching for. On many levels, Conran succeeded. However, the movie
simply didn’t find as large an audience as it needed.
Filled with over-the-top action sequences that never completely stall
out between the other ...

“Clerks,” “Mallrats,” “Chasing Amy” and “Dogma” all featured
appearances by Jay (Jason Mewes) and Silent Bob (Kevin Smith)-- two
crude, drug-dealing layabouts.
“Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back” takes these two peripheral characters
and makes them the central characters in their own film. Jay and Silent
Bob discover that the comic book, “Bluntman and Chronic” (which is
based on them) is being made into a big budget Hollywood movie without
their permission, so the duo head off on a road trip Tinseltown to
either shut down the production or get their fare share of the pie…
Kevin Smith’s previous films mostly used these two characters sparingly
and to good effect. When they’ve been featured in brief bits of
business their overwhelming crudity, bald-faced immaturity, appalling
sexist diatribes and grating catchphrases tend to elevate the
surrounding material. While the rest of the films where they appear all
have liberal doses of foul-mouthed crudity and bathroom ...

This is not a remake of the famous Vincent Price horror movie of the
early 1950s, which helped kick off the 3D craze. All that’s left is the
title, the practice of encasing corpses in wax and putting them on
display, and a character named Vincent. Although the Price film isn’t a
classic, it’s much better than this steadfastly routine slasher movie
that, sigh, again pits late teens/early 20s types against a murderous
fiend (or here, two of them). On the other hand this movie boasts an
exuberantly bizarre climax, a jaw-dropping combination of on-set and
CGI effects that’s not like anything else you—or anyone—has ever seen.
The movie scores big points for originality in the last 15 minutes or
so, but to get to those 15 minutes or so, you have to sit through the
whole damned thing. And that’s not much fun.
Director Jaume Collet-Serra does a surprisingly good job ...